


The Road to Saint-Malo

by iberiandoctor (jehane)



Series: The Travellers Toward the Sea [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo, Les Travailleurs de la mer | Toilers of the Sea - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Javert Survives, Canon Era, Hotel Sex, M/M, Road Trips, Summer Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-21
Updated: 2016-10-21
Packaged: 2018-08-23 18:41:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8338495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehane/pseuds/iberiandoctor
Summary: “I find I cannot sleep without you,” Javert said.(On holiday, M. Gillenormand sees to the rooming arrangements. Javert is compelled to take matters into his own hands.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Miss M (missm)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/missm/gifts).



> My thanks, as ever, to Kainosite for the beta. IDK why Gillenormand is like this, either.

Six weeks away from work! The inspector would never have countenanced it. But Javert was no longer a policeman, and M. Duvergier had been happy to grant his chief clerk’s first request for leave. 

Of that time, it had taken six days to travel from Paris to Saint-Malo, the coastal town from which they would catch the ferry to Guernsey. Javert was heartily sick of the Pontmercy carriage and the slow pace preferred by M. Gillenormand.

Javert was still uncertain of his welcome amongst the Pontmercys. M. Gillenormand made him particularly uneasy. However, he would endure any hardship if it eased the journey for Valjean. The man was unused to the concept of a vacation — indeed he was too quick to deny himself the smallest indulgence. It was almost as if he felt he did not deserve the happiness of being with his daughter, or indeed any happiness at all. For Javert, who owed everything he had to Jean Valjean, this attitude was not easy to countenance.

Six days on the road, at an agonising pace. It was made more agonising by the accommodations at the various inns on the road to Saint-Malo. Propriety dictated that the three old men should have separate rooms, and Javert was no longer accustomed to spending the night alone. 

How Javert's defences had been so reduced! After rescuing Javert from the river, Valjean had put him in his own bed and stayed with him until Javert's fever broke, and he had healed sufficiently to rise and retrieve the pieces of his life — still raging furiously at himself, and the world, and at Jean Valjean for compelling him to live in it. But despite his initial angry words of rejection, Javert nevertheless found himself returning to Valjean's side that first night, like a stray dog to the heel of a new master, and every night thereafter. Valjean had been bemused at the outset, but had nevertheless willingly opened his home at Rue Plumet to that wretched creature, with more patience and generosity than Javert deserved. 

Eventually, Javert's starved heart and body had finally responded to such unprecedented kindness — not as the implacable, irreproachable icon of the Law, but a broken sinner who had never known affection — and Valjean had once again welcomed him into his bed. 

Valjean, too, had over the course of his own long life never experienced another's desire. In Valjean's bed, they had learned together. 

Javert’s childhood nights had been spent in crowded squalor; in Toulon he had slept in a dormitory with the other guards. For years afterwards, sleeping alone had been a blessed luxury. But after an unprecedented year of sharing caresses and then unguarded slumber at Valjean's side, Javert found he was quite unable to get to sleep on his own. 

On the first night of their trip, he stared at the ceiling in the modest tavern room, acutely feeling the absence of Valjean's comforting bulk beside him. The strange, cold bed barely contained his tall frame and still it felt too empty. He stayed awake until daybreak, his restless mind filled with the small sounds of the tavern and the duties he had left behind in the offices of M. Duvergier and the ghosts of his own past. The peace which he had learned in Valjean's arms remained painfully out of reach. 

The next day he informed their group that he had a headache and rode in the carriage with his hat pulled over his eyes. 

On the second night, in an even smaller and colder room adjacent to Valjean’s own, he became aware of his state of physical frustration, which simmered as a sullen fever under his skin. Eventually he placed his hand under his nightshirt and grasped his neglected length. Imagining his friend similarly handling himself in the next room not three feet away, he stroked himself to an unsatisfactory completion, and only after was he able to fall into a fitful sleep.

“Does your head still hurt?” Valjean asked when they met the next morning, on their way to break their fast. He touched Javert on the arm and the simple gesture went straight through Javert's protective armour. 

Javert could not believe what a besotted fool he had become, reduced to such a state of need after a mere two nights apart from his friend. 

“I am well,” he said, shortly, and they did not discuss his health or indeed anything of import any further on the journey through the green hills and fields of Normandy.

That evening, they were once again assigned separate rooms in the roadside tavern. They dined together as a family. M. Gillenormand made known his views on current political matters and Valjean responded in kind. Marius and Cosette held hands under the dining table in a way that set Javert’s teeth on edge. After dinner, Marius suggested a game of whist, but nobody was particularly keen to play. That night everyone retired early and Javert was very glad of it. 

Javert performed his ablutions in his room, and then spent the better part of an hour sitting on the edge of his cold bed in his dressing-gown, seized in a paroxysm of self-doubt.

Eventually, he exclaimed, “We are both too old for this nonsense!” and stamped out of his room into the corridor. 

He raised his hand to knock on the door of Valjean’s room when the door jerked open as if of its own accord, and his fist narrowly avoided Valjean’s astonished countenance.

“What a surprise,” Valjean said, or tried to, at any rate, as he suddenly found himself with his lips otherwise engaged. Two nights alone had made Javert reckless: he caught his friend bodily in his arms and captured Valjean’s mouth with his own. 

Between kisses they managed to close and lock the door behind them. They wrestled off each other’s nightclothes, and like much younger men they fell to the narrow bed in an urgent embrace. 

Valjean had brought with him on the journey the small pot of salve which they used at home, but neither of them could wait to properly deploy it — they clutched blindly at each other, Javert pressed himself against Valjean’s aroused body, Valjean groaned and arched his back and thrust up between Javert’s thighs, and in no time at all they both released helplessly across the bed and each other in a gush of white.

After they had caught their breath, Valjean began to laugh, quietly, so as not to rouse M. Gillenormand in the neighbouring room. Javert savoured the rare sound of his friend’s amusement.

“It seems we both had the same idea, though you were quicker about it than I.”

“I find I cannot sleep without you,” Javert said. There were many things in his heart and this was the one that was paramount.

“You need never do so again,” Valjean said, and drew him close once more.

At first light, Javert put his dressing-gown back on and stole back to his room like a criminal, but not without first stealing a last kiss from his friend. 

“You are looking much revived, sir,” Marius said cheerfully to Javert at the breakfast table. Javert was in such amiable humour that he had a smile for the young man, and across the table he could see Valjean smiling too.

The road that day was smooth, the journey pleasant. M. Gillenormand’s conversation was even tolerable. Valjean sat at his side in the carriage, the press of his body against his a promise that it would soon be evening. Javert looked out of the window at the new sights and sounds of the passing countryside, the sunshine warm on his face. 

In the night, Javert once again crept out of his single room, and Valjean was waiting.

On the sixth morning, Javert experienced an unexpected encounter that almost made him swear off vacationing for good. 

He had just left Valjean’s room at daybreak, and had paused incautiously to rub the sore spot between his shoulder and neck, savouring the sweet ache of the night's exertions. Too late, he heard the adjacent door open, and M. Gillenormand stepped fully dressed into the corridor right in front of him.

Javert was struck momentarily speechless. M. Gillenormand squinted up at him, and slowly a wicked smile broke across his face.

“Ah, M. Javert! I see you are out and about indulging yourself at the crack of dawn. Why does that not surprise me? You are a former policeman and have seen enough of the world. Good man, good man!”

Javert was entirely dumbfounded as to the import of M. Gillenormand’s words. That man pressed on, eagerly, “Our chambers are cold, after all, and I did think the serving maids waiting on us at dinner last night were quite comely. Country lasses, you know, always ready with a smile for an older gentleman, and round enough everywhere to keep one’s bones warm all year, am I right?”

Javert looked at the old man with dawning comprehension and horror. 

“Monsieur, I believe you may have the wrong idea,” he began, and then halted. If M. Gillenormand believed the disarray of Javert’s loose hair and unkempt whiskers was due to clandestine sexual congress, he would not be entirely in error. Javert knotted his dressing gown more securely around his middle and inwardly cursed his own complacency.

“Not to worry, my dear inspector. Your secret is safe with me.” The old man reached up to pat Javert on the shoulder, and to Javert’s complete mortification gave him a broad wink. “Best not to mention this to M. Fauchelevent, eh? He is very religious, he might disapprove. Best not speak too loudly, also! We are right outside his door.”

“Indeed,” Javert said grimly. He suspected Valjean was listening through that door in convulsions of amusement. It was just as well; at least one of them ought to derive pleasure from this humiliating encounter, and few enough things made Valjean laugh as it was.

"Was your room too cold last night?" Valjean enquired mildly when they greeted each other in that self-same corridor later that morning.

Javert snorted. He considered placing his arm about his friend's waist, but after the nearness of his escape from M. Gillenormand he was not about to risk any further untoward behaviour, at least in public. "I would not know," he murmured, truthfully. "In any case, for some reason, my old bones no longer feel the cold." 

"Not old, and they will never have reason to feel so, now," Valjean murmured, and offered Javert his arm. Javert allowed himself to be escorted thus to breakfast in an entirely satisfactory manner. 

Javert had to endure the ill-disguised smirking of M. Gillenormand across the breakfast table. It was not as much of a hardship as he would have expected. Valjean sat at his left hand, drinking coffee; occasionally their fingers brushed against each other's, and Javert could not help his wry smile.

Valjean might agree, after all, that neither of them might be used to the concept of a vacation. However, Javert found he was no longer opposed to the same, even though journeying for pleasure still seemed an unnecessary indulgence; certainly not if it meant days and nights at his companion's side spent as pleasurably as this. Valjean's embrace made strange rooms familiar and yet exciting at once — and there was also the familiar indulgence of falling asleep to the sound of the heart that had, so improbably, become his home.

**Author's Note:**

> This story was originally an extended scene from the second chapter of [The Supreme Constraint](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8138744), which I'd written to fill the following adorable part of Miss M's Valvert Summer prompt: _on holiday with the Gillenormands and Pontmercys, Valvert are put in separate, adjacent bedrooms; cue sneaking into each other's rooms at night (and out again in the early morning) because they've just got so used to spending the night together._
> 
> When it was rightly pointed out by my longsuffering beta that the sexy holidaying, room-sneaking-around shenanigans detracted from the spooky Gothic atmosphere I was trying to make in _Constraint_ , I decided to move these 1,800 words of road trip sex into a separate coda instead. (The salve and the Gillenormand commentary in the second and third chapters of _Constraint_ are remnants from this excision.) Hope you enjoy, M!


End file.
